Elinor "Lin" Ostrom (born Elinor Claire Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political economist whose work was associated with the New Institutional Economics and the resurgence of political economy. In 2009, she shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver E. Williamson for "her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons". To date, she remains the only woman to win The Prize in Economics.
...She was a lead researcher for the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP)..."

"Towards equitable and secure access to land and natural resources for family farmers in the Mekong region...
Thematic Study:
"This thematic study explores the importance of customary tenure for rural Cambodians with the aim of strengthening its recognition. It begins with an overview of customary arrangements in the country, and their significance for the livelihoods and wellbeing of rural communities. This is followed by a discussion of the recognition of customary tenure in the Cambodian legal system, and the challenges confronted in the implementation of legal provisions. The third section examines the impacts of market driven land polices on vulnerable customary users, particularly the granting of economic land concessions and private land titling. Mechanisms – both formal and informal – for settling land disputes are also briefly examined. The final part of the paper identifies key opportunities to increase the recognition and protection of customary tenure in Cambodia and lays out recommendations for policy influence and for strengthening alliances, community rights and representation.
The study is based on a review of relevant literature and interviews held with representatives from government agencies, donors, civil society organizations and individuals with relevant expertise in Cambodia."

"Towards equitable and secure access to land and natural resources for family farmers in
the Mekong region...
Thematic Study...This thematic study presents a country-level overview of customary tenure arrangements in Vietnam. It examines the extent of customary tenure in the country, the degree to which customary tenure is recognized both legally and in practice, and explores key opportunities for better recognition."

Abstract: "Global economic change and policy interventions
are driving transitions from long-fallow swidden (LFS)
systems to alternative land uses in Southeast Asia’s uplands.
This study presents a systematic review of how these
transitions impact upon livelihoods and ecosystem services
in the region. Over 17 000 studies published between 1950
and 2015 were narrowed, based on relevance and quality, to
93 studies for further analysis. Our analysis of land-use
transitions from swidden to intensified cropping systems
showed several outcomes: more households had increased
overall income, but these benefits came at significant cost
such as reductions of customary practice, socio-economic
wellbeing, livelihood options, and staple yields. Examining
the effects of transitions on soil properties revealed negative
impacts on soil organic carbon, cation-exchange capacity,
and aboveground carbon. Taken together, the proximate and
underlying drivers of the transitions from LFS to alternative
land uses, especially intensified perennial and annual cash
cropping, led to significant declines in pre-existing
livelihood security and the ecosystem services supporting
this security. Our results suggest that policies imposing landuse
transitions on upland farmers so as to improve
livelihoods and environments have been misguided; in the
context of varied land uses, swidden agriculture can support
livelihoods and ecosystem services that will help buffer the
impacts of climate change in Southeast Asia."
Keywords: *Alternative land uses *Ecosystem services *
Livelihood security *Shifting cultivation *Southeast Asia

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: "In recent years, many governments globally
have formally recognized community land and
natural resource tenure, either based on existing
customary practices or more recently established
land governance arrangements.1 These tenure
arrangements have been called by a variety of
names, such as community, customary, communal,
collective, indigenous, ancestral, or native land rights
recognition. In essence, they seek to establish the
rights of a group to obtain joint tenure security
over their community’s land. This approach is not
necessarily limited to use by those communities that
largely manage their lands solely on a communal
or collective basis, because it can encompass
individualized arrangements within it. In fact,
recognizing the boundary of all lands held by a
community, and then allowing the community itself
to define individual rights within that community
land boundary, can be much more cost-effective
(Deininger, 2003). Neither is it an approach
solely used by indigenous, ancestral, or native communities, because any rural community with
established occupation of their lands can potentially
be eligible for such protections. We use the term
“community land and resource tenure” because
many community-based forms of tenure encompass
a range of different land use types, including
permanent agricultural land, shifting or swidden
cultivation areas, forests, grazing areas, and water
bodies.
The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance
of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context
of National Food Security, established in 2012, affirm
the importance of recognizing and respecting all
legitimate tenure rights holders and their rights,
whether formally recorded or not (Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
[FAO], 2012). This includes indigenous peoples
(IP) and other communities with customary tenure
systems that exercise self-governance of land,
fisheries, and forests..."

CONCLUSION:
"A developing country like Lao PDR is struggling to gain recognition from other countries
in the world. This requires that the country applies a human rights perspective to
governance of land. In this case the land rights are the rights of the ethnic groups in the
uplands that practice customary communal tenure. These groups would like the
government to accept and register their communal land use legally. The first step
towards this is in the development of the National Land Use Policy which is still in draft.
This study provides evidence-based arguments for the inclusion of a respect for
customary communal tenure in the land policy.
The field study on communal tenure in Houaphan can serve the government in terms of
integration of local land governance aspects into its development planning process. The
research has brought an increased understanding on biological characteristics of the
common resources and how communities use and manage such resources in a way that
everyone including how the poor share benefits and responsibilities to keep the
resource sustainable and thus contribute to the national land management process.
The research analyzed how local ethnic group farmers in Houaphan view the resources
that they have traditionally used as the property of their community. They have
communally organized institutions that provide sufficient incentives to ensure equity in
access to land and for the farmers to invest in enhancing the productivity of the
resource system through internal rules that assign rights to individual households,
while protecting the outer boundaries. These rules are oral internal rules. They are
collectively created, used and developed by generations of villagers. The internal rules
include characteristics of natural and social aspects and they support the improvement
of local life in terms of protection of the resources for future use.
The research has found that the communal tenure system in Houaphan is slowly
affected by legal land and forest management activities of the government, particularly
where the government does not integrate local practice of use and management of local
resources of local ethnic people.
Currently, many international and local business investors are looking at natural
resources in Houaphan province as business destination. Evidence-based research
result shows that it is necessary to protect the land of the ethnic groups to safeguard
against land loss to business activities which may be planned without considering
existing communal tenure. Many local communities will lose their customary rights to
their common property resources and the country will at the later stage have to address
more complicated political issues if local communities see that they are losing land to
outsiders.
The evidence-based findings of this research suggest an option that communal tenure
rights of local communities in Houaphan should be legally recognised along with
provision of clear set of management rules and the formation of the village as a legal
entity to fully exercise the management of the resources through an issuance of
communal titles to the land parcels that make up the common property of the village.
The communal tenure should include the fallows of the shifting cultivation uplands and
all the customary communal tenure of upland and lower land communities. The cultural
and social dimension of communal land use is a critical aspect to consider in order to
work out strategies for the future development of rural life in the province. This will lay
a foundation for local people to improve their social-economic condition and ensure
their participation in the country’s development process.
The study has applied selectively the theory of Thomas Højrup to form a macro view of
the country’s development process in the remote areas. As part of the interpellation
conditions highlighted by Højrup, the country is experiencing a profound process of
transformation. The Government of Laos organizes local societies and re-arranges land
and forests in order to transform a traditional subsistence economy to a market
economy.
In practice, interpellation does not always turns out successfully because many
economic development activities destroy a local practice that is worth preserving in
terms of livelihood and human rights of the communities. This happens in particular
where traditional common property systems are found and the systems that have
existed long before Lao PDR came into being.
The transformation means change and this change is a question that needs to be clearly
answered before communities agree to participate in the development process. Where
such change is proposed by outsiders, local people need to know that it brings to them
better results in comparison to what they already have. Otherwise they are reluctant to
participate in the country’s transformation process as they value their own customary
ways. This reveals that not only the country’s worldview, but also the view of local
people towards how communal resources should be managed is important for the
transformation. So far the local perceptions and practices of communal tenure is not
widely understood by government officers and the more studies that are carried out to
feed into the finalization of the land policy and new land law the better."

"A Report to Enhance Discussions about Customary Land Rights in Burma.....This purpose of this paper is to present a brief summary of the
issues and current
situations facing ethnic and indigenous communities around the
world that are
using a customary rights framework to manage their land and natural resources.
By outlining these experiences, ethnic groups in Burma will be
able to better understand their own context and
possibilities as they struggle to gain control over
their lands during this transitional time. While examining how
other countries
have incorporated customary land management structures into the
ir rule of law,
it is hoped that the ethnic groups in Burma can more eff
ectively discuss, debate
and outline their own strategies to obtain just and participatory land management
systems..."

"A Report to Enhance Discussions about
Customary Land Rights in Burma.....This purpose of this paper is to present a brief summary of the
issues and current
situations facing ethnic and indigenous communities around the
world that are
using a customary rights framework to manage their land and natural resources.
By outlining these experiences, ethnic groups in Burma will be
able to better understand their own context and
possibilities as they struggle to gain control over
their lands during this transitional time. While examining how
other countries
have incorporated customary land management structures into their rule of law,
it is hoped that the ethnic groups in Burma can more eff
ectively discuss, debate
and outline their own strategies to obtain just and participatory land management
systems..."

Summary: "This paper presents an overview of the distinctive
features of communal tenure in
different community-based land and natural resource
management systems. Communal
tenure refers to situations where groups, communities, or one or more villages have
well defined, exclusive rights to jointly own and/or manage particular areas of natural
resources such as land, forest and water. These are
often referred to as
common pool
resources: many rural communities are dependent on these resources for their
livelihood. In communal tenure, both the boundaries of the resource owned in
common and group membership are clearly defined. These are necessary conditions to
exclude outsiders and to secure the rights of group
members so that these rights cannot
be taken away or changed unilaterally.
Two models of communal tenure are presented in the
paper;
these models differ in
terms of the function of the state, the length of tenure and the characteristics of the
resource system concerned. In the first model, the
permanent title
model, the state fully
and permanently hands the land over to local indigenous communities for private
collective ownership. In this situation, the resource system is often multi-facetted,
comprising agricultural lands as well as forest, water and pasture land. Permanent title
for indigenous peoples’ communal land is a special
claim supported by national
legislation and by international conventions, coven
ants and declarations that many
countries have endorsed. Examples of permanent title in Asia include the Philippines
and Cambodia, where legislation provides for collective rights of indigenous
communities. In many instances such as Cambodia, Philippines or, for instance, Papua
New Guinea, the indigenous groups or communities that are eligible by law for private
and permanent communal tenure need to become a legal entity to be recognized as
a
communal right-holder by the state. This may require community incorporation.
However, the process of incorporation can be cumbersome for people who are not
necessarily literate in the national language or in
the demands of state bureaucracy.
In the second model, the
delegated management
model, the state maintains ownership
of the resources and delegates management to local
groups, most often villages, for a
specific period of time, with the possibility of renewal. Such agreements are generally
subject to national legislation only. In this case,
the resources are often uniform and
relate to, for example, community forestry, community fishery, pasture or irrigation
group tenure that all come in many different forms
with different bundles of rights.
This model is far more common than the first, with
Nepal, India, Thailand, Cambodia
or Mongolia providing examples.
In addition to these two general models, one may still find traditional customary
communal tenure in remote communities. Here the state does not actually regulate or
intervene in the management of resources, but all local communities in the area would
know of the local rules of harvesting and withdrawal rights.
Both the permanent title in communal land and the d
elegated management model may
originate from an existing customary arrangement, where the rules are known and have
been adhered to by right-holders – and their neighbors – for generations. The state can
acknowledge these existing communal systems through
formalization of existing rules
and rights. In a different situation, where customary arrangements are no longer
present and the resource is degraded and under open
access, the formalization of
Communal tenure and the governance of common property resources in Asia
delegated management of, for example, a new community forest, may imply setting up
or
inducing
communal tenure institutions, where they did not previously exist.
Inducing institutions is a major exercise in social
engineering; the resulting induced
institution must be carefully aligned with the physical and natural characteristics of the
resources or resource system and, ideally, should build on an existing set of norms in
the community. Where governments and/or donor projects have a pro-poor approach in
inducing communal tenure for natural resource management, the pro-poor targeting
mechanisms must be mainstreamed in the institution
building.
In all communal tenure systems, the physical and biological characteristics of the
resource system factor decisively into the regulatory frameworks that communities
establish. One must match with the other. In situations where both subsistence and
market value products can be withdrawn from the resource system there are also many
kinds of interlinked and embedded rights: the communal tenure is usually embedded
within a larger nested hierarchy of institutions."
Nowadays the communities will often need support an
d recognition by the state in
order to manage effectively their common pool resou
rces. As a consequence,
communities will need to establish two sets of rule
s: (i) those rules that constitute the
community as an entity in the eyes of the state and
(ii) those that define internal rules
of benefit sharing. Whereas constitutional rules de
fine the community as a legal entity,
internal community rules establish the management r
ights in the resources and the fair
appropriation of benefits.
Interest in communal tenure and common property res
ource management has risen since
the 1980s among academics, governments and internat
ional development organizations
working on land and natural resources management. D
ebates on communal tenure are
still ongoing in many countries in Asia, in the con
text of market pressures and
dynamics, which call for privatization to increase
productivity, and in the context of
big business vying for a stake in valuable land and
other natural resources, in some
instances leading to land grabbing. The current mar
ket driven pressures on natural
resources create both challenges and opportunities
for communities and governments.
Overall, policies and institutions that promote acc
ountability and good governance
over these resources, both by the government at nat
ional and local level and by
communities, are required. Some specific approaches
, such as communities’ mapping
of their territories, are proving useful tools to s
afeguard their lands, although they are
not sufficient conditions: the wider political and
regulatory environment must be
supportive too.
Communal tenure will very likely play a significant
role in the policies and actions for
climate change mitigation. With the emergence of in
itiatives for Reduced Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD and REDD+)
, governance and benefit
sharing of carbon finance become critical questions
in defining who owns the carbon
stocked in forest. Marketable community rights to t
his special resource unit (stocked
carbon) must be supported by national legislation t
hat favors communal tenure of some
of the carbon properties. This may lead to a separa
tion of rights to carbon from the
broader rights to the forest and land, an aspect no
t yet addressed by theoretical work on
communal tenure..."

ABSTRACT:
"Is there a ‘best practice’ model for the legal recognition of customary tenure?
If not, is it possible to identify the circumstances in which a particular model
would be most appropriate? This article considers these questions in the light
of economic theories of property rights, particularly as illustrated by the
World Bank’s 2003 land policy report. While these theories have their flaws,
the underlying concept of tenure security allows a typological framework for
developing legal responses to customary tenure. In particular, this article
suggests that the nature and degree of State legal intervention in a customary
land system should be determined by reference to the nature and causes of
any tenure insecurity. This hypothesis is discussed by reference to a wide
variety of legal examples from Africa, Papua New Guinea and the South
Pacific. The objective is not to suggest that law determines resource governance
outcomes in pluralist normative environments, but to improve the
quality of legal interventions in order to assist customary groups to negotiate
better forms of tenure security and access to resources."

"...The main purpose of this paper is to examine legal measures taken to recognize
indigenous groups and provide for their ongoing operation; the paper starts, therefore, from an
underlying assumption that indigenous groups have continued relevance to the needs and wishes
of the people who operate within them. Nevertheless, while it is beyond the scope and purpose of
the paper to explore this complex issue in any depth, it may be useful to present – however briefly
– some of the arguments made for and against the preservation of indigenous groups. In the
course of this brief discussion, the focus of the present paper will be narrowed to a concentration
on the role of indigenous groups in the ownership and control of land and other natural resources.
It should, perhaps, be stressed at the beginning that it is the role of groups as groups which is
under consideration - that is, the group as an entity over and above the individual members which
make it up..."

"The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatisation of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. Offering a critique of the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organisations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries."